The Sherwood Dog Park is an absolute gem, but definitely not a hidden gem. The dog park is a series of off-leash trails; each trail is fenced at the sides and relatively short. On the day that we visited, the park was very (very!) busy. It’s certainly no surprise to see it busy, since the variety of t!errain and the well-treed nature of the trails makes it a very pleasant spot for a walk. As well, the park is well-known among the dog owner community.
I definitely advise keeping your dog in the fenced area. Allowing dogs to run amok in the restricted portions is not consistent with the intention of this dog park! Of course, most dog owners have probably allowed their (well-behaved?) pets off-leash in a location where it is not permitted by city bylaws. However, because of the sheer amount of dog traffic, this park is probably not the place to do it — it seems best to leave them off-leash in the off-leash area only. There’s no shortage of space on the trails.
My wife and I very much enjoyed our stroll through the Sherwood Dog Park trails, as did our pup. The mixed terrain and large number of friendly dogs kept our pup well stimulated. I would be more hesitant to take a younger puppy here: this is just because puppies may be prone to running too far ahead, or have poor recall (especially in the presence of many other dogs).
Summary Table
| ground cover | Mostly hard-packed dirt |
| water | Surprisingly, we didn’t see any during our one visit. Another blog, here https://hikingtoronto.hikingtorontofordoglovers.com/2020/07/sherwood-park-off-leash-paradise.html, shows a stream available for drinking, but we don’t remember any portion of the stream as being accessible without jumping the (flimsy) fencing. It would have been easy to miss with the variety of short side trails in the park, though. |
| dog park association | ? |
| size | medium-large, or small, depending on how you count off-leash trails |
| enclosure | There is fencing similar to chicken wire fencing to keep dogs on the designated trails, but there are gaps. In most cases, they would have to get through multiple layers of this fencing to really escape. The small trail system is large enough to enable a dog that really wants to run away from you to do so for quite a while, however. |
| url | https://www.toronto.ca/data/parks/prd/facilities/complex/149/index.html |